Mets complete six-win homestand with 4-0 win over Marlins

NEW YORK — Forgive the New York sports fan for failing to notice the Mets Sunday.

Postseason pressure weighed on those in Manhattan, as the Rangers skated against the Philadelphia Flyers at the Garden. In Brooklyn, the Nets suited up to face the Toronto Raptors in another first-round playoff series. While in the Bronx, Masahiro Tanaka, the dazzling rookie from Japan, took the mound for the Yankees.

No such flash or high stakes were on display in Queens, where Sunday’s matinee showing was a rubber match between the Mets and Miami Marlins. But 26,861 fans at Citi Field did witness further reason to ponder where among baseball’s top pitching rotations the Mets rank.

The debate became richer as Dillon Gee disarmed the Marlins in a 4-0 win, the sixth victory in eight games for the Mets. The club’s starters compiled a 2.49 earned run average during a 10-game homestand that concluded with eight stifling innings from Gee.

Gee, the ace, is emblematic of the whole staff: quietly effective. Over the last 11 months, only three hurlers — known around baseball by their last names: Greinke, Scherzer and Wainwright — have an earned run average lower than Gee’s mark of 2.75.

"He’s pretty under the radar, like a lot of players in this room," David Wright said of Gee. "Guys want a ton of strikeouts. Guys want the sexiness of pitching. I’m not sure Dillon has that sexiness of a pitcher, but he just goes out there and gets the job done."

Without relying on a high-powered fastball or the eye-popping strikeout totals of, say, Tanaka, Gee defuses lineups with a simple strategy: pitch low in the strike zone and keep batters guessing at what’s coming next.

Sunday, Gee’s changeup dropped away from the Marlins’ bats and his two-seam fastball swerved. Gee had so much movement on his pitches during a blustery afternoon, catcher Anthony Recker said, that he walked four batters, the most in 15 starts. Nonetheless, he baffled the Marlins, who posted just three hits, struck out six times and failed to move a runner past second base.

"I enjoy pitching, working the ball in and out and keeping them off balance and getting the weak contact I’m looking for," Gee said. "When that happens, I take pride in that."

The Mets’ bats have offered sparing support for the pitching staff for most of the season. Sunday, the lineup seized upon an erratic start from Marlins right-hander Tom Koehler, who walked four, to hand Gee a second win this season.

Koehler walked Daniel Murphy and hit Chris Young to start the second. Lucas Duda twisted a fastball a foot inside the foul line deep in left field. Murphy circled towards home to score the game’s first run, but Young halted at third as the ball bounced into the stands for a ground-rule double. Young was stranded there with the bases loaded after a ground out by Eric Young, who failed to drive in four runners in scoring position Sunday.

Up a run in the fifth, the Mets struck three times. Wright knocked a double off the left-field wall that allowed Curtis Granderson to race home. With Wright on third, Chris Young battled Koehler for 11 pitches, waiting for a slider to drive into the left-field seats for his second home run of the season and a 4-0 lead.

The Mets also supported Gee with some nifty defense. Murphy and Wright made bare-handed scoops. Wright also nabbed a pop in foul territory outside third base with a no-look, sliding grab as the baseball dipped over his shoulder.

"That’s the way we have to play," manager Terry Collins said, of the Mets’ sound-fielding, great-pitching formula.

With the staff propping up the club, the Mets are 14-11 and jumped to second place in the NL East with a nine-game road trip beginning tomorrow in Philadelphia. In the locker room, there was no talk of the 90-win sum targeted in spring training by general manager Sandy Alderson. But confidence is rising.

"If you have the pitching, anything can happen," Wright said. "You don’t necessarily need a juggernaut offense to win games."

Still, even Mets fans in this city seemed to have one eye elsewhere Sunday afternoon. Some of the loudest cheers came when highlights of Rangers goals flashed across the jumbo center-field scoreboard.

Collins ignored a temptation to send Gee, who threw 110 pitches, out for the ninth. Carlos Torres came in to sweep up the final inning and the game ended in a tidy 2 hours and 42 minutes, allowing fans plenty of time to rush home, pop on the TV and catch the Nets or Yankees.